The world is increasingly
convulsed by a series of deepening crises that appear beyond the capacity of
human beings to alleviate or solve. The evidence of social stress and moral
decay is everywhere around us. In particular, the family, the wellspring and
guarantor of civilization, is beset and beleaguered on all sides, caught in a
rising tide of abortion, divorce, drug and alcohol abuse and inter-generational
conflict. As we look around us, we see a world fast collapsing into violence,
corruption and sin. Whether on the blood drenched "killing fields" of Lebanon
or Bosnia or on the "mean streets" of New York or Los Angeles, the lives of
millions of ordinary people remain in terrible (and growing) peril.

Within the
Catholic community, there are additional causes for concern. Our increasingly
empty pews, confessionals, seminaries and convents are grim testimony to the
continuing crisis within our Holy Faith. In the vast majority of industrialized
nations, attendance at Mass has fallen into single digits (in Germany, for
example, less than five percent of all Catholics regularly attend.

Mass and the
numbers are not much better in North America). Since the close of the Second
Vatican Council in the early 1960s, the Church has witnessed its influence and
authority decline to a level not seen in more than 1800 years! Many theologians
and Fatima authorities now believe that this crisis within the Catholic Faith
is the subject of the still-unreleased Third Secret of Fatima and contains
Heaven's answer to the widespread chaos and confusion within the
Church.

As we approach the new
millenium, the God-given right of all human beings to life is under violent
attack on all sides. Since the legalization of abortion in the United States,
more than 30,000,000 children have been murdered in their own mother's wombs.
Around the globe, this silent "slaughter of the innocents" continues to produce
a holocaust of death unparalleled in human history. Current trends to legalize
euthanasia and broaden the use of so-called "mercy killing" in the United
States, Canada and throughout Europe are certain to result in the deaths of
additional millions of elderly, infirm and/or otherwise "unwanted" human
beings.

Certainly, some of the terrible problems confronting the world can
(and should) be solved within the family circle and by men and women of good
will working within their own spheres of influence. Nevertheless, many problems
remain beyond the scope of the ordinary individual. Government, far from
providing solutions, is all too often the source of the problem. So too,
science and industry, once hailed as the new "saviors" of mankind, have
produced vast social and cultural disolocations and given birth to technologies
that threaten the lives and well-being of billions of men, women and children.
One does not have to be "anti-science" to recognize that difficult delimmas
like climatic change, nuclear war and pollution threaten everyone.

While some of the problems we face today are the result of natural or historical processes, it is increasingly clear that many others are the deliberate product of forces opposed to the Christian Faith and consciously dedicated to the
destruction of our civilization's most treasured values and ideals. The rise of
Communism in the first half of the 20th Century engendered the widespread
glorification of materialism and atheism, establishing a new "religion of man"
without and opposed to God. Speaking at Fatima six months before the Bolshevik
Revolution, Our Lady warned that if man did not stop offending God, He would
use Russia as His chosen "instrument" to punish the world. She further declared
that, if Her Fatima requests (especially for the consecration of
Russia) were not
heeded, that Russia would "spread her errors across the earth, raising up wars
and...annihilating various nations."

And just as God's
Mother predicted, the "errors" of Russia -- materialism, militant atheism,
totalitarianism, abortion, euthanasia and genocide -- have spread across the
face of the earth, leaving mountains of corpses as the "fruits" by which "ye
shall know them" (Matthew 7:16). Dozens of nations and peoples have been
mercilessly exterminated in the name of philosophies and political parties
deriving from the same anti-God, anti-religious doctrine first
enshrined into law in Bolshevik Russia in 1917. Despite the much-heralded
"death of Communism," the 40,000 corpses lying in Chechnya today demonstrate
that Russia's "errors" continue to exact a relentless and bloody toll on the
world's people.

At Fatima, Our Lady declared: "Only I can help you."
Considering the confusion, chaos and violence surrounding us everywhere today,
Her words seem less a prophetic promise than an obvious and undeniable
statement of fact.